A lot goes into planning a wedding, which means there are a lot of ways that a wedding can go completely wrong.
For as many “dream day” weddings, there are a fair share of nightmare weddings. But we don’t hear about those as often. Mostly because people don’t want to admit their magical day was ruined.
It makes sense, look what we’ve made weddings out to be — a billion-dollar industry where people spend an average of $20,000 for one day. That’s a lot of pressure to succeed!
Recently, thanks to internet threads and anonymity, people have been more open about their ruined weddings or ruined weddings they have witnessed. Recently, a Reddit post on the subject of wedding disasters gained traction.
One Redditor asked, “Those who have been to a ruined wedding, what happened?”
And it racked up 22.7k comments over the course of five days. Whew, that is quite the topic.
We’ll keep you from guessing and just get to the juicy stuff.
1.
I played a wedding where we started playing the set, everyone ran outside and nobody was to be seen for the rest of the night.
I originally assumed it was because nobody liked us but the bride came in afterward and said there was a huge fight involving multiple members of both families and everyone basically went home upset, injured or in a police van.
We couldn’t stop playing since we were paid and it was our job, and the only person watching was the drunk uncle dancing on his own asking for requests we didn’t know.
2.
When I was 6 or 7 I went to a cousin’s wedding. Everything was fabulous for little me, so much sugar everywhere, basically heaven. The reception was in a big community center that was reserved for the occasion. Went to the girls’ bathroom, passing by the men’s room to see my uncle on the floor. Went back to the main room to tell my dad my uncle was looking weird. Well, uncle had a stroke and had died.
The bride spent the rest of the afternoon crying, and everyone except close family left.
Bright side is the marriage is still going strong 20 years later, despite what happened that day.
3.
My dad and stepmom’s wedding was a shit show. For context, her family was terrible on both sides (abusive father, neglectful alcoholic mother, and step-parents who didn’t care about her much) and she basically ran to my father to get away from it all when she was 15. Bigger problem was, my dad was 26, also abusive, and just a real fuckin shitshow of a person. On my father’s side of things, he hated his mother and blamed everything wrong in his life on her (as he did to most women in his family, later doing it to my stepmom). So the wedding was doomed to be terrible.
It started when my stepmom was walking down the aisle. She’d reconnected with her father in the last year and had recently been in a fight with her stepfather, so it was just her dad walking Her. There was a branch in the way (outdoor wedding) but he pulled it out of the way for her. As she thanks him, he lets go and flings it back into her face and literally collapses laughing. She awkwardly chuckles, no doubt knowing he is going to get mad at her if she shows she’s upset, and the day continues but she’s visibly upset.
After the toasts, some people didn’t drink the champagne that had been set out. The one thing she had asked of her mom was that she not drink — she was even given sparkling juice rather than champagne. So while stepmom is changing into her reception dress, her mom goes table to table-pounding down all of the alcohol she can get her hands on. A cousin of mine who doesn’t know what’s happening starts chanting “Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!” and stepmom walks back to her mom downing the last one and denying everything. Cousin slips out of the tent once he realizes what’s going on and leaves the two alone to argue. Stepmom comes out crying a few minutes later, goes back to her car, and doesn’t come back for a good 20 minutes.
While all of that is happening, grandma pulls up and starts cursing out my dad for a ton of shit, including marrying a kid (stepmom was 25 at this point) who she hates, not letting her invite a friend to the wedding, and him owing her a bunch of money. Dad tells her to fuck off and she leaves.
Then my dad got mad at my stepmom for being gone so long, accused her of either “being a baby” for crying or of lying and cheating on him. So she sat down on the fringes and tried to not cry and also remain visible to my dad for the next several hours.
They may have been dating for 10 years, but the marriage only lasted 6 months.
4.
I used to do catering work, and this one time my boss sent me to a remote location in the woods on a beautiful river. I found out while we were loading the truck that the boss wouldn’t be going and that I was essentially in charge. My boss promised that everything was taken care of, set up, etc.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I arrived to this remote location and literally–nothing–was set up. We were only about an hour early so I frantically started trying to get the tent in order, we needed extension cords to run the coffee and tea–there were none. We needed tables to set up the food–there were none.
I somehow whipped up impromptu everything for the missing things, and just as the bride and groom are arriving, we blow the fuse for our only power source and the place is plunged into darkness. We reset the breaker, I move some stuff around. Blow the fuse again.
This delicate dance went on for the entire evening. Through speeches, first dance, the works.
I think the worst part of the entire experience was when we went to rinse our dishes before boxing them up and found out that when we blew the fuses the water pump for the place stopped working and needed to be primed again. At that point I said–forget about it, we’ll take them back dirty and the crew and I spent several more hours after the long ride home doing them. That was the day I worked a 15-hour shift without a break–and still ruined the wedding.
Needless to say, I quit that job.
5.
No one turned up to the reception except myself and partner. There was about 8 people in total and the couple had went all out for the reception. Awkward.
6.
Was a guest of friend of the bride, did not know anyone attending. Very expensive over the top place, several hundred guests of this very Italian wedding. Maid of honor grabs mic at the cocktail hour begins her speech, rambling, drunk. Quickly devolves to stating the recently deceased mother of the bride was against this wedding and that’s basically what killed her. Plus Vinny will never give up prostitutes. She is tackled by several people and dragged away.
The happy couple is separated and divorced within a year.
7.
Attended a wedding reception and was seated near the cameraman. An aunt of mine was sitting closer to the camera and spent the evening commenting and gossiping about everyone, and much of it came out on the video. The cameraman was great, he did two copies, one edited and the other no holds barred…The unedited version is the stuff of legend.
8.
Groom got so drunk the night before he couldn’t make it to the altar at the ceremony. They still had the ceremony with only the bride and her party, plus one of the groomsmen, who apparently didn’t get wasted. Everyone there was shaking their heads the entire time. The groom did make one singular appearance for a few seconds at the reception. He looked like a zombie and was wearing street clothes.
And this was no trashy wedding. The bride was a professional dancer for a major label pop star, so that gives you an idea of the type of people that were in attendance. 200 plus people at the ceremony alone, probably double that at the reception.
They divorced within 6 months.
9.
The bride’s father was 45 min late to walk his daughter down the aisle.
While we were waiting the air conditioning broke in the venue. It was over 100 degrees outside and humid AF. The place was overcrowded. You could barely move without bumping into someone else and in the heat that was extra miserable.
I guess the air conditioning problem had also affected the refrigeration or something because most of the food was spoiled. The only food on the buffet was salad, spaghetti and rolls. Not enough to feed even half the guests.
Most people left after the first dance. Two of the bride’s aunts fainted.
The bride and the wedding planner were crying.
10.
It was a big wedding, over 300 people. Turns out the bride had been having an affair with her cousin’s husband. The cousin had known for a little bit, but waited until the wedding to go table to table letting everyone know the bride was sleeping with her husband. Poor groom was blindsided. Worst part was his father-in-law was well off and opened up a restaurant for him. Well, he lost his wife and his restaurant
11.
Best friend’s mom got remarried and had an expensive, beautiful wedding, but for some reason didn’t hire a DJ. Last minute her mom asked me to manage the CD and gave me a list along with verbal instructions of when to play each. I tried to warn her that I simply did not follow, but she told me she had confidence in me.
Apparently all her life she wanted to walk down the aisle to some specific song, but I just couldn’t figure it out. They had to get walking to match the sunset, so she went ahead down the aisle while I flipped through a series of incorrect songs too the horror/amusement of the crowd.
For years after when I called my friend’s house and her stepdad answered, he’d say, “Is this the guy who fucked up my wedding? How are ya?”
12.
I went to a wedding where the bride and groom bought the wedding package on Groupon. Which is fine, why spend a fortune for one day? But I guess the venue thought they could cut some corners. So they stuck us in a room that smelled so strongly of cat urine some people immediately left. The only drinks were those from a vending machine. It was next to an airport so every time a plane took off the ceremony had to be paused because you couldn’t hear anything. And the day after the event, every single one of us had food poisoning.
13.
Drunk mother of the bride stumbled, fell, and rolled into a lake…
14.
This was one I worked at. After the ceremony, right at the start of the reception – photographer was taking ‘jumping’ photos of the bride and bridesmaids, so they were all jumping in the air while wearing heels. Bride landed and dislocated her knee, then passed out and kept going in and out of consciousness. We called an ambulance who turned up and fixed her knee etc, but she wanted to continue with the wedding. She then had the first course of the meal and threw up down her dress, and had to sit with her mum in another room while everyone else danced etc. Felt so bad for her as she spent the rest of the evening crying.
15.
I was invited to the reception of one of my good friends. They had been courthouse married for months and living happily. When I arrived at the location and saw the big crowd I knew something was wrong. Friend’s wife is prone to panic attacks and is extremely agoraphobic to the point of breaking down and crying if she is overwhelmed.
Immediately call friend and ask what’s going on and if this was okay. Turns out friend’s parents invited everyone possible to be there without my friend knowing. After I sent him a picture of the crowd, him and his wife thought it would be better to go on a second honeymoon than have a reception.
He sent a message apologizing to all those his wife and him invited and telling them to leave without telling his parents. Parents had a meltdown as we left.
16.
Aussie bride married into Russian family.
There was vodka bottles on every table. The bride tried to keep up with the vodka shots. I was impressed at her effort.
Then she disappeared for a couple of hours, and didn’t move much for the rest of the night
17.
This was around 2009. On the second day of the wedding, the bride went swimming in the ocean. It took place in Tenerife. She swam out too far and was basically ‘lost at sea’ for 9 hours or so. She eventually found her way back but was in bad shape. Everyone was panicked the whole day and thought she drowned. By the time she got back, she wished she had. Her husband found her phone and read a bunch of messages supposedly from her aunt (but it was quickly clear from the sexy content it wasn’t her aunt at all, she had been having an affair with the best man for apparently years). They got an annulment shortly after. 60,000 down the drain. One of the most opulent weddings I’ve ever been to.
18.
Hurricane Ivan. Our wedding was scheduled for Friday and the hurricane hit us dead center on Thursday. We were sitting around with no power on Friday and remembered that a neighbor was a pastor? So my partner and I just knocked on his front door and asked if he would just marry us in the front yard. So the big church wedding was cancelled but instead I got married in the front yard with chainsaws and stuff in the background.
Been married 17 years now.
19.
The grooms father groped both the bride and his daughter, my then girlfriend, multiple times each. Ended up getting punched out by his son, and locked in a mini-van for a few hours until he sobered up.
20.
I found out well after my wedding (via a Google search of all things), that my mother-in-law had invited her entire church to our wedding without telling us. Just put the open invite there in the bulletin, pretty as you please. I have no idea how she thought we would seat and feed an additional hundred to 200 people had anyone actually showed up.
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